nd struck it in
again with a force that made a wide, square chip leap out. He looked
over his shoulder at Westover, who was moving away. "Say, stop in some
time you're passin'. I live in that wood-colored house at the foot of
the Durgins' lane."

VIII.

In a little sunken place, behind a rock, some rods away, Westover found
Jeff lurking with his dog, both silent and motionless. "Hello?" he said,
inquiringly.

"Come back to show you the way," said the boy. "Thought you couldn't
find it alone."

"Oh, why didn't you say you'd wait?" The boy grinned. "I shouldn't think
a fellow like you would want to be afraid of any man, even for the fun
of scaring a little girl." Jeff stopped grinning and looked interested,
as if this was a view of the case that had not occurred to him. "But
perhaps you like to be afraid."

"I don't know as I do," said the boy, and Westover left him to the
question a great part of the way home. He did not express any regret or
promise any reparation. But a few days after that, when he had begun
to convoy parties of children up to see Westover at work, in the late
afternoon, on their way home from school, and to show the painter off to
them as a sort of family property, he once brought the young Whitwells.
He seemed on perfect terms with them now, and when the crowd of larger
children hindered the little boy's view of the picture, Jeff, in his
quality of host, lifted him under his arms and held him up so that he
could look as long as he liked.

The girl seemed ashamed of the good understanding before Westover. Jeff
offered to make a place for her among the other children who had looked
long enough, but she pulled the front of her bonnet across her face and
said that she did not want to look, and caught her brother by the hand
and ran away with him. Westover thought this charming, somewhat; he
liked the intense shyness which the child's intense passion had hidden
from him before.

Jeff acted as host to the neighbors who came to inspect the picture, and
they all came, within a circuit of several miles around, and gave
him their opinions freely or scantily, according to their several
temperaments. They were mainly favorable, though there was some frank
criticism, too, spoken over the painter's shoulder as openly as if he
were not by. There was no question but of likeness; all finer facts were
far from them; they wished to see how good a portrait Westover had made,
and some of them consoled him